Kansas City Strip

The wild, wild west: If Kansas City feels a little safer this weekend, it’s because the National Rifle Association is in town. That’s assuming the members can actually get here — it can’t be pleasant to travel after you’ve left your cold, dead fingers at an airport security checkpoint.

The visitors are looking forward to a packed weekend; their annual convention includes city excursions set up by Blue Ribbon Arrangements and Tours.

In the “Kansas City Highlights” tour, the guests will visit downtown and the city market, where they’ll hear a bit of Kansas City history. Guides “talk about Tom Pendergast, showing buildings made with Pendergrast concrete, and they talk about politics in Kansas City,” says a Blue Ribbon employee who requests anonymity. “They’ll go to Lewis and Clark point, where that new statue of Sacagawea is really nice.”

NRA members also can take the Independence tour, which includes the Harry S. Truman Library and Stephenson’s Old Apple Farm restaurant. The NRA requested that the tour stop at the Bingham Waggoner Estate, home of frontier painter George Caleb Bingham.

We recommend another stop on the NRA’s Independence tour: the 3600 block of Ralston Avenue, where police officer Terry Foster was shot to death in March by Jeffrey Keith (who proceeded to commit suicide by burning down the house).

In fact, we suggest an alternate “Kansas City Lowlights” tour, which would include:

· The Brookside 7-Eleven, where two masked gunmen shot fleeing clerk Carolyn Neal to death September 10.

· The 3900 block of Pennsylvania, where artist Brian Gwaltney was shot and killed by a robber on September 30.

· The 4300 block of McGee Street, where Nanette L. Liden was shot to death entering her home on December 5.

· Roadhouse Ruby’s, 11950 S. Strang Line Road in Olathe, where Freddie L. Clement was shot to death early on December 31 in the club’s parking lot.

· The Save-A-Lot store at 63rd Street and Parallel Parkway in Kansas City, Kansas, where manager David L. Morrell was shot to death on March 6.

· Roger’s Drop Off Laundry and Dry Cleaning at 1200 Brooklyn Avenue, whose owner was found shot to death on April 9.

Surely those stops would be more enlightening than discussions of architecture in Westport and on the Plaza.